Diversity Programs in Engineering

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People are filtering and hello everyone. Hi Sarah.

Hello.

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Good yeah, so will hopefully participants will be coming in soon. It looks like we're getting a couple but just let me know if you guys have any questions. I'll be monitoring the chat and the just the Wi-Fi for all y'all. Just make sure everything goes smoothly but so let me know if you need anything.

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Awesome, and if you need to like stop at any point in time because I'm not monitoring the chat, you just let us know.

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Awesome, thank you.

Sweet hello everyone, welcome to the diversity programs in engineering session. We still have folks filtering in, so feel free to hang out for a couple of minutes. We have some of our really amazing student panelists here with us today. We're going to go ahead and get started in about two or three minutes, so hang tight and we'll start here in just a bit.

Alright, we're gonna go ahead and get started. Welcome everyone. I'm to the diversity programs in engineering session. We're really excited just to tell you a little bit of what we have to offer and we have some really amazing students here with us today that are going to be sharing their experiences while they've been in these organizations. So before I hand it off to our participants, I do want to go ahead and just introduce the programs. Give you a brief overview on what they are.

As well as introduce myself, my name is cloudy ernandes ru she series pronouns I am that are rich in equity. Coordinator for the Walter Scott Junior College of engineering.

So one of my primary responsibilities is to work with these really great students to provide them with resources as well as opportunities for success within their student organizations. And so our diversity programs in engineering. We currently have five within the Walter Scott Junior College of engineering. We are looking to re establish our Society of Asian scientists and engineers at the moment, so hopefully in the spring semester we will build up our organizations to six and so we're really excited for those opportunities.

Many of these organizations are identity based, but they do welcome all of our student population. So if you are interested in joining a specific organization, we can go ahead and provide that information for you.

And every single organization is unique and different, but I would say we're really sets them apart is that they all provide community to our students and so it's a really amazing thing to see them engage in community. Especially right now that you know we are in a pandemic. They found really cool and unique ways to engage in community with themselves and the other components of our CSU community. So that's been really amazing to see for student organizations are pseudo organizations also provide resources for.

Currency as you students as well as do a lot of service acts with our Fort Collins community. And so a lot of our organizations participate in distinct events which they will go ahead and talk about when they introduce themselves as well as other they participate in other opportunities such as national conferences, which a lot of them will be going to next week, and so national conferences are really great way for students to engage in professional development to learn more about the organization.

And to connect with industry partners, like I said at the beginning, we do focus on community and so we built try to build community within CSU. But we also try to build community with industry because we recognize that is really important. And so without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and let our panelists introduce themselves. We do have a couple of panelists that weren't able to join us here today, so if I can go ahead and have a silly go ahead and.

And introduce yourself. And after you give your brief introduction, we'll go ahead and move on to our slide deck to talk about each respective organization. So at aselli, go ahead and take it ouf.

Hello everyone, how you doing? I hope you are doing fine. Um my name is Adacel E Science Kerosin. I am a third year civil engineering student. I'm also the community I reached here for the CSU ship chapter and you know ship chapter is diversity student organization and he steps out for Society of prophetic professional engineers.

I am from Colorado, but I did live in Mexico for a few years, so I've been, you know, traveling between two countries, but I think I have a good time in CSU.

Thank you, could you you can go ahead and go next.

Hi everyone, my name is Kojo an. I'm a 50 year studying electrical engineer here at CSU Anne. I'm one of the five executives for nasty which is the National Society of Black Engineers. So basically we're sitting organizacion and they call it the Bolt Start College of engineering, which represents like students of all backgrounds. But our main focus is increasing the number of culturally black engineers in the industry. So basically we do a lot of events.

And our organization here has numerous chapters all over the United States, as well as international an. As of today we have a total of almost like 25,000 people registered as members for our nesby nesby society as a whole, and throughout the presentation will give you a little bit rundown about what we do about Onesky and everything like that.

Awesome thank you Sir. Do you wanna share a little bit of who you are?

Yeah hi guys, my name is Sir Dmitry, I know the little tag there says Teresa Centola, she's actually a president but she had a different issue come up. So I'm filling in for today. My pronouns are she, her, hers. I am the vice president for the Society of Romans, mirrors or sweet and I am a third year setting chemical and biological engineering and biomedical engineering.

Awesome, thank you and so I do want to recognize that we did not have two of our panelists here today. Casey and Simona Rat were actually set to talk on behalf of Asus, so I can go ahead and do that. And that's actually the organization that will start off with the American Indian Science and engineering society, or Asus one of the themes that you will find at CSU is that we love to use acronyms like you will hear a lot of Acronyms today, whether it's major related or student organization related.

And it makes it just really easier for us to navigate the college. But if for some reason you were We mentioned an acronym or you're not too sure on what something means, you can go ahead and ask questions on the chat function. All of our sessions today will have a chat function in case you do have those questions and we do have a student ambassador that is currently monitoring the chat in case we miss any questions. So feel free to use that function. We really want to make this an informal conversational space where you can learn more about our student organizations.

Um but a little bit more about Asus. Like I mentioned before, a lot of our student organizations that we will talk about here today anyway, are based within the Walter Scott Junior College of engineering. However, some of our organizations do welcome students that come from other colleges, other majors, or other identities. I also mentioned that they were identity base, and so Asus does welcome all students to their organization and specifically with Asus.

They work collaboratively with our Native American Cultural Center, and so actually this past week they did attend their national conferences. So, like I said, a lot of opportunities for professional development there, and to connect with industry. But as we we go along, you'll notice that each one of our organizations will have opportunities in their respective fields. So a lot of them do host specific events that are geared towards specific communities. In the case of aces.

They actually collaborate with the Native American Cultural Center and the Fort Collins community to host in annual powwow, every single. It's every single year, but we you know, if it weren't for this pandemic, we would be engaging in our path while this month. And so we're trying to find ways in which we could actually engage with community virtually. And that's one of the things that Asus has been working on for this year. But the power is one of aces most signature events. They also collaborate with the Native American Cultural Center to provide tutoring.

For specific stem based discipline courses and so that's a really good opportunity. If maybe as a student, you're not. You're not sure about committing full on to a student organization. You can see the different services that they offer in case that you might be like wow. This is something that I really do want to join right? And engage in that type of community.

So if you all do want more information about aces, all of our student organizations do have a general email address, and that's what I really recommend. If you were to take anything for from today, you can go ahead and screenshot the PowerPoint slide. If you want to, but the general contact email for aces is located on the bottom of this slide, and we did the same for all of our student organizations, and this is just to make sure that you all do have that contact information. If you do want to reach out, or if you're interested in some of the services that they offer. All of our student organizations.

Also do have an executive board and so a lot of our panel is today are actually members of their executive boards in their organizations so they could talk a little bit about what that leadership opportunity looks like specifically for them. But I'm really happy that you all chose to come to this session and hopefully we can give you some more information about our organizations. But if you do have further questions about Asis, feel free to email that general contact email, or you can also.

Email myself and I can go ahead and pass on my email after the presentation, but with that I'm going to go ahead and pass it on to Kojo and he's going to talk to you a little bit more about the National Society of black engineers or nesby.

Hi everyone.

So I'm going to talk a lot about Nesby's a ho. Hopefully y'all can see the slides. So for nesby were national organization and based on that we have six regions all across the United States as well as international and basically for wooden's be does is our our society as a whole is created especially for our chapter was created here CS year 2012 even though the Nesby as an entity or society itself was created in 1974.

By a group of black engineers in Purdue University. So basically our motor or mission statement is to increase the number of culturally black engineers in the industry. As long as as well as that we want to also increase the number of stamp stamp students across the board. So we're not just only open to black students, but anyone who feels like nesby is going to be right for them. And then also here at CSU we do a couple of events.

And based on those events you can see we do some professional outlooks where we teach students how to like, do professional antabus an also go over their resumes or anything that you need in order to be successful. And we have something called pasta torch, which is a yearly or semester long event where we basically get to interact with different students from high school, middle school and Elementary School. So we can teach them the basic concepts of stem and.

Try to gain their interest into coming into college and being able to pursue some of these degrees an looking forward to that. Stemming from color is something that we're trying to incorporate ourselves into. It started about a year ago or so, and basically what we're trying to do is put all the different student orgs that are all staring majors Sturm organizations together so we can create something that's like bigger than ourselves in order to help our students.

For an SB as a whole here at CSU, we do a lot of events and even with our events we try to prioritize our members more than we do. The events that we have going on. And because of Covid we made it our mission statement to make sure we're taking care of each of our members going through their courses and anything that they might need. Help with an one thing I can assure you that when you become part of Nesby family, your family for life, kusnetzky has the opportunity for you to even after you graduated to join the Nestle Professional.

And that is an organization where you you get into with other professionals in industry in order to assist students in college, high school, wherever you may fit that they need that stem education. So basically, nesby is here for you, and if you want to join us be feel free to contact us is.

Yesyou@gmail.com will provide more information about that. You don't have to be black to join SB as long as our mission statement in what we do applies to you. Feel free to contact us and we'll give you more information about that, thanks.

Awesome, thank you so much Kojo. For more information on his be the next organization that that we wanted to go ahead and talk about is out in stem Oro stem an out in stem is one of our organist student organizations that is a little bit more interdisciplinary, so they do have a lot of membership within the College of engineering, but they also have membership within our College of natural science and so kind of like couture touched on a little bit before.

Something that we're trying to focus on this year is 1 building community, but also a collaborative atmosphere for our organizations to collaborate and so stemming from color is one of those events that nesby focuses on, but Ossim is also a part of the diversity programs in engineering, and so specifically they offer support services for students that identify as LGB Tikku Plus, and so something that they're trying to do is build with community within all of our colleges.

Out in stem does host, and I'm not too sure if we've mentioned it before, but like most of our student organizations, they do host biweekly or monthly meetings, and so students have the opportunity to engage not only in the events that the organizations host, but they can also attend those meetings to see if they have specific opportunities out there looking for, and so awesome does Provide that space for our students to engage in general membership meetings. Some of these general membership meetings.

Specifically for awesome, they do have some guest speakers. They do engage in community or sometimes they use it as an opportunity to hang out all as students, and so that's a really cool part that students can participate in, because sometimes you know when you do struggle in your major or you're finding that you're struggling in a social sense. When you're at CSU, it's really nice to rely on your community because often they provide things from a different perspective that maybe you weren't thinking about.

And so we do want to offer those spaces to students to problem solve, and specifically in engineering you find that problem solving is one of the things that you will end up doing the most in the major, and you're trying to find unique ways in which you are doing that, and so all stem just offers another community to our students that want to engage in that community and kind of like coaches said with nesby, you do not have to identify as LGB Tikku Plus to join Ostim. They also do offer spaces for Allyship If you want to be an ally.

Within the community and support will stem in that way.

Tim was also not able to have a panelist here with us, but the general contact email is located at the bottom of the slide show and if you do want more information, we can go ahead and ask a question on the chat and also be providing my email after the presentation. But with that I'm going to go ahead and pass it on to Adam Silian. She's going to tell us more about ship.

Hello can you hear me again yeah.

I I did transition our slide to the Society of Hispanic professional engineers. Can you see them?

Now code is like.

OK, I do have a question. Are the slides moving? 'cause for me They're kind of frozen.

No, but it's OK. I'll just go ahead and talk. Yeah, I don't know, it's kind of frozen for I don't know if he was just for me or like for everyone in the slide in the presentation, but it's OK. I can just go ahead without it. Hello everyone, I'm just reminding you. My name is Sarah Sally.

And I am the community I reached here for the Csus ship chapter. For those who are not familiar with ship ship stands for Society of Hispanic Professional Engineer Engineers an we are a student organization. Here she is you.

We do a lot of things in or a student organization an we focus mostly on like professional development and also like bringing or building a community within you know, students.

We for part for professional development activities. Sometimes we do like a resume, workshop, interview, workshop and this workshops are usually delivered by keynote speakers from engineering companies. So you're learning from the professionals and other activities that we have to our every.

They are days before the engineering career. Fair ship puts out or plants a a resume rush event and what is what. This is is basically an event for students engineering students that can come in and they sign up for a time slot and they come and get their resume review by recruiter from an engineering company an like.

This song is very helpful. Other activities that we do is that we attend national as well as regional conferences or conventions. In this, these are very amazing opportunities 'cause you get to network with not only just students engineering students from all across the US but also like you get to network with recruiters from a lot of engineering companies so you get the first Han.

Interaction with them. I know this has been a successful event because one of our past.

Stood in former student. She already graduated but she was able to obtain a work in at a very prestigious Engineering Company. An like she got this interview basically through the National Convention. So I say that it's very if you take advantage of it, you can get a lot of it out of it, but we also have not only professional development activities, but we also want you to feel welcome.

So sometimes you know we host events for students so that they can just come an relax and talk. Have a good time, you know, I know from before the pandemic we put out any band for like Lottery and I and everyone was just having fun. You know we kind of an engineering we sometimes you need like a little break, you know just to camel my com or mines and relax a little bit so you know these events help you and to network with.

Other students I know I've met a lot of my friends in the ship chapter. They become very like close friends to me and I am really thankful that I got to meet them through this student organization.

We also have like volunteering events. Well of course you know, during this pandemic we are now allowed to do a lot of like social interaction. But before the pandemic we used to volunteer like for fall cleanup which is basically cleaning up the leaves in like the Fort Collins community. And then we also volunteer for Ram Bride. And for you guys, if you guys are not familiar with ram right is is like an Uber for students you know.

During the weekends, and we also volunteer for that. An one of our biggest bands was also noted is CNC's, and this event is basically to bring awareness for Science and stem relating fields for little kids. We collaborated with the high school in previous years and it's been very, very successful. I think 'cause I I have a little brother myself and I really like when he like gets up.

Teen get introduced to science and stem dinner, so those are kind of like the overview of things that we do in ship.

And you know, as Claudio mentioned, the National Convention for ship is actually happy happening this upcoming week is obviously going to be virtual, but I know it's going to be fun. I had I had the opportunity to attend the Nelac Conference, which is kind of Leadership Conference online. This past summer an I got to even though like it was online, I got to learn from professionals network with students and learn more about how can we be successful in engineering, you know.

Um, as of now you know, for due to the pandemic we meet every Monday through soon we still do a lot of activities, even though like you know it's true online. We actually had recently a resume rush, but it was hosted through soon so we are still like, you know, looking out for ways to.

Keep, uh or events in a safe way so that students can still like you know, have that community. And as I say, really like one thing I really love about ship is the community and we welcome everyone. You don't necessarily need to also be identity of like Spanic or Latino or Latina. You know you you can be any like from any culture and we we will welcome you, you know.

Any identity we will welcome you so yeah, so if you're like you know, thinking like oh maybe I shouldn't go because you know I'm not Hispanic, you know, but like, don't don't be afraid like we have students even from other majors too. We have students who like our other majors like I remember last semester like this student keep coming to our median so he really enjoy and he was not engineering. But we still welcome them. You know, like.

So that's really one thing I really love about ship day. It's inclusive activity. You know that it welcomes everyone? Yeah? So if you have any questions you can always reach out to us. We have like a social media pages like Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn profile so you can always reach out to us and you know ask any questions.

Yeah, that's think that's all I have to have a good day.

Thank you so much. Uh, Sally, you did a really good job talking about um ship and we always have fun learning more about what you all do on campus. The next organization that we want to share a little bit more about is sweet or the Society of women engineers. So Sarah, go ahead and take it from here.

Hey guys, again I'm sorry Dmitry. I am the vice president of suite for this year so a couple of the things that we like to focus on as a Society of the whole our professional development. We really focus on diversity, diversity and inclusion, an advocacy and outreach and so for in terms of the professional development aspect of the society we do BI monthly meetings where we usually host speakers from industries similarly to how ship does we have? Female engineers who work in all sorts of different fields from Sivels about medical to mechanical all over the place.

So we get lots of representation and they share about their career journeys. Just hard things that they experience was like to be a female in this industry and then just tips and tricks for us. Like a couple weeks ago we had this fantastic speaker sharing about how to negotiate salary, which is something I never would have considered but definitely significant. And I'm really glad we have stuff like that for professional development. Another aspect is the national conference, like Claudia mentioned, that will be next week. Usually it's a weekend long thing somewhere.

United States, but this year it will be spread out virtually over 2 weeks and I'm super excited because I'm hoping that that's going to provide a lot more Accessibility for us to go to all these different events, the speakers and just learn a whole lot more about society. About just being professional in industry and so part of that event is also a massive career fair. It's one of the biggest in the world for engineers, and lots of sweep. All have gotten interviews and internships and full-time positions and offers from this.

It's a wonderful, wonderful opportunity and so another couple of things that we do are super involved with outreach. So usually in the spring semester for the past couple of years, we've been doing this wonderful event called introduce a girl to engineering and we host about 100 middle school girls, the CSU campus, and we show them all our labs with you super fun activities to introduce them to stem and just encourage that diversity aspect that hey females can be in. Here's to look at all these wonderful role models we have people from industry.

Just showing these girls hey it's awesome written engineer you should pursue your passions and so we do a similar event called stickless. We for high school students where high school juniors and seniors allow or allowed to shadow currents we members and actually as a high school senior I was able to participate in that event. I shadowed the current president and it was fantastic. Is the reason why I chose. See if you like showed off the community of Swede, the community, CSU what it's like to be an engineer and how collaborative the environment is here.

And so that's like that's really the reason I chose CSU. Like I said, until the reason that I'm still super involved with sweet, there's just a great experience. So we do lots of outreach stuff like that, and I feel like it's really beneficial to the whole community, like Fort Collins. And I'm not originally from work on for like all Colorado.

Gucci

or were also super focused on just building community just along with the professional development within our meetings. Some of my closest friends are within sweetie, and I'm so so blessed to have met them. Really grateful for sweet and I would definitely encourage anybody looking browsing organizations to check out sweet just like the other clubs. You don't happen to have to be female, you're happy and engineering used to support our mission to improve diversity and advocacy, so please check us out. I'll definitely submit in the chat. I'll put in our website and I'll put in my email in case you want.

To ask anymore questions, I'm I'm an open book so.

Awesome, thank you so much Sarah. And so the last organization that we did want to touch on a little bit about before you know we move into kind of the panel aspect of the session is the Society of Asian scientists and engineers or says says right now is what we call a dormant organization so they didn't necessarily have active members for I believe two years and so we had a group of students this past year that was really eager and they had a lot of energy to reestablish the organization. So we're currently rheostat.

Lising says and so it's a really great opportunity to see how the effort that it takes to re establish an organization and so at these students are really passionate about bringing this organization back to really bring community to students. I identify as IP de or different Asian identified folks, and so something that we're trying to figure out now is how do we provide that community from a virtual aspect? All of our panelists right now touched on a little bit about.

How the pandemic has impacted right are through organizations, but also how they've kind of found the work around that the pandemic and have been able to establish community within themselves and the events that they have, whether it's through their weekly meetings or through their signature events, and so says is currently re establishing and so if you are interested in joining space or you know you come to CSU and would like to attend an event or general membership meeting, you can go ahead and reach out to me. I did put my email.

On the chat.

Then hopefully we will be able to provide you some more information once we become a re established organization, but it's a really cool and really exciting time for space in terms of re establishing.

And so hopefully, you know, as all of our panelists arctan as I spoke about student organizations, you were able to get a little bit of an idea of what it's like to be in a student organization and what they are. Student organizations have to offer, and so I think what's really important is understanding. Kind of why students join, why they stay joining in their student organizations. I think Sarah the point that you talked about participating in a suite of it in high school and then coming to CSU and seeing it from the other side.

That really speaks volumes on the organization and the community that they provide, right? And this is just one of the examples that we have here on campus. We really want again, I know I say community a lot, but that's really what we try to engage in, especially right now that we can't necessarily all be in the same room together. And so now that we talked a little bit about our organizations, I do have some questions for panelists, so saracco join at a study and you all can feel free to answer the questions as you want. You can go ahead and unmute yourself.

But my first question for you all is why did you specifically join your student organization as a CSU student?

I guess I can go first for me when I.

Help.

You're good, I cool so for me when I came to college.

Go ahead, go ahead.

I actually didn't declare myself as an engineer. I was actually undeclared seeking engineering interest and after a semester, that was when I actually figured out that I wanted to be a computer engineer. And true that I did some research and I wasn't really getting the help that I needed based on the stand and would really electrical engineering or computer engineering was. But I talked to a couple of other students and in the Recommended Nesby.

Which I got involved with and there were a lot of students in there who had different concepts about what engineering as a whole was for me. So they were able to talk me through the process and let me know the support system that I had within the College of engineering as a whole which I had anything in search myself. And true that I was able to figure out that next week or something I really wanted to join and ever since then I have been apart of Nesby. I've gone to a couple regional conferences for conferences and the last conference that I went to as a national conference in.

Which was great. That conference I actually got my first internship which was a big deal and that was two years ago and so far I've been working for that company for this long. Could have learned a lot of things and even true nesby I was able to re declare my concentration in electrical engineering and explore other options.

OK, I think I can go ahead, um, so I actually explore different organizations. I actually went to sweet few times, few millions. I actually will in tier for the.

I think it's thus the introduce no, and I introduce a girl to engineering but stick with three event and I actually liked out too. But I just got really busy with schools. I kind of had to decide like to like have one priority of my organization an I guess the reason I shows ship was that I like became a lot of friends with the people in it and I just kinda feel very welcome Ann. I thought like.

Oh, this is like my community like I use I use tick like feel very welcome. I guess an like the mission kinda really spoke to me. The ship mission that it's like bringing awareness to stem in Spanic Communities an so I guess that's probably mostly why because he resonated out loud with me. An also depends that she provided where like very interesting. So I just kept going to.

The meetings every like Monday when we just have them on Mondays. You know an when we were able to attend in person, so I guess that's the reason because the mission spoke to me and I just really found the people. They are very friendly and welcoming. An in suite 2 but as I say you know I had to kind of decide, you know a priority because I keep going to like other meetings and then just keeps missing some details and others. And I was like.

Well, I I should you know, probably more be more. Um, like with one and then the other one. Well, sometimes you know so yeah, if if it makes sense.

Thank you Leslie.

OK, so I mean I can follow up with so I joined sweetie like I said because I had a friend has to experience with it in my Senior High School I just was really excited to join the organization. But as I got to college it was even compounded. Why I want to join because originally as a freshman I was actually mechanical engineer and so in that classroom it was heavily male dominated. Like I didn't have a whole lot of peers that were females and so I was really looking to have that sort of aspect of community.

Friends and people who could push me to do better and help me just deal with school who also understood being a female in that in the field because I also actually lived in the honors dorm and academic village, so none of my roommates or friends in that atmosphere were engineers. 'cause That's not what that dorms for, but they were all over the place. I was really looking for a community that understood like the struggles of the majors, the struggles of like, the coursework, and also struggles like of being a female in that field.

Also, thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Honestly, you kind of touched on one of the questions I wanted to go ahead and ask the next and this really deals with involvement and you know, being in an extracurricular organization and how you relate it back to your major, but understanding that engineering can be a pretty difficult major specifically some courses some years, right? And so.

Kind of the question that I wanted to go ahead and ask is how do you balance your extracurricular involvement? So if you do have involvement apart from being in the DPE organization, so Sir, I know you mentioned honors, go ahead and talk about that, other involvement and how you balance it with your courseload. So maybe if you have some tips and tricks to offer or folks in the chat room today, go ahead and share.

Just kind of what that balance looks like for you.

Anne hello, can you hear me?

OK.

I can help on that one, so I Claudia says I am in orange burger.

I can't know.

No, you go ahead, sorry.

Will have Sarah go for then?

No, it's fine, so we'll have Sarah go first and then you add Aselli.

Sorry for all the technicalities, are a little much but anyways so yes I am in the Honors Program. I am double majoring. I am actually also involved in research on campus and I am a Scott scholar on campus. So my freshman year was all over the place. I'm super busy, is really difficult to try to figure things out, but now I'm still involved in.

All those things and I really just I had to pick things that I really really enjoyed 'cause I actually took a semester off research and I realized how cool that wasn't how much I missed it. So now I'm back and similar to how our Italy was talking about choosing an organization that was most significant to her originally was also part of Engineers Without Borders, which is now called Grams Without Borders of it. I just found a home that sweet so I had to pick one and I stuck with sweet.

But it is really difficult to figure out time management, and that's really just put a lot of being in. College has taught me overall and now the way I kind of measured out is just like I really plan everything down. I use my planner so so much like I would die without my planner and I kind of slimmed up by day. So like on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'm doing research, but Wednesdays are totally sweet days. 'cause That's when we have our meetings and our officer meetings and that's when I devote work to try to figure out all logistics of my position and then an honors. It's just kind of like another class that you have to do with, like it's a.

Specific.

Course work if you have any questions always. You can definitely send those in the chat to your email me about them, but it's just like separating that dividing up your time and like using your planner is key.

Oh yeah, for sure my research is super cool. I love it so I am involved with doctor Christopher, snows crystallography lab and So what we do there is we grow these tiny little itty bitty crystals of protein and DNA and various like solutions of salts. But the idea is that we grow these tiny little crystals that are actually poorest and so the goal is that we can eventually float different protein structures into those pores because we can shoot these crystals with X Rays.

And then we can actually figure out the structure of them. And so if we put proteins inside of these pores and again shoot them with X Rays, then we can also figure out the structure of these proteins, which is significant because there's tons of proteins in the world that we don't know the structure of, and therefore we don't know the function of. So the imaging is at the end of it, and it's so fun.

OK, so I think a key is that in my during my first year as I said, I kind of wanted to get a field of what was being offer in terms of like just engineering organizations, but also like other student organizations outside of engineering. So I kept kind of like.

Look at the. You know the announcements that they send in your email. I think it's a very key to look at your emails everyday and check them at least twice 'cause you get a lot of amazing opportunities that you can miss out if you don't check your email and that's how I kind of discover a lot of the organizations 'cause you know there is a week where you get to explore organizations and you sign up for them and you receive emails and updates. So that's kind of I discover a lot of the organization, so I just keep going through their meetings and after some time I kind of just put together.

Which ones were the ones where I feel like the most identify or where I could gain a lot of opportunities or or where I kind of enjoy my time a lot, so that's kind of the key to like realize.

Be like Oh, I really like this one about this one. In comparing contrast and then choose one that you would like to be the most involved with, um.

For that in then also like I say like. Check your emails 'cause you receive a lot of amazing opportunities through them. I know I yeah I got to participate in like workshops for storytelling and how like it can help you be successful in talking. You know in like different workshops too. Yeah, so that's definitely a thing. I was even involved in.

In non engineering organization to was for dancing. I think it's really good if you can have a engineering focus 'cause that way you can meet your peers from like classrooms but also like have you know how we that you can relax too into you know yeah.

And just your campus? Um, what is it called Calendar? 'cause That's where you can know where your assignments are doing. You can be like, oh, I have a ship meeting at 6:00 AM Monday. Therefore, I should like, you know, try to finish this assignment before I can go to my meeting. You know, that's like another thing that can help with time management using agendas as tourists stayed an calendars to keep up with assignments.

Thank you Kojo. Did you have things that you wanted to add in terms of time management and what balance looks like when you're involved in a studio organization? Research as well as classes.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have been here for this. Is my fifth year at CSU from the get go. Started my first semester as a freshman. I'm a part of the Air Force ROTC detachment here at CSU, and that's like a huge commitment for me to Commission as a second Lieutenant after I graduate.

And true that I had to do numerous like time commitment efforts and being up early and stuff like that. And even with that I also was still a part of the CSU cruise, which is like a Health Network education team for the University. And I've been with that since my freshman year. And true that I also joined different organisations such as Nesby and part of the IEEE, which is the engineering in residence for electrical engineers here at CSU.

An outside of that I moved to my friends tell me that I had a lot of things going on 'cause I can tell you at the same time, I have one time I had like maybe five to six organisations or Half Men at the same time. And I'll see time management is key to figure out where my balance was and I had to figure out my limits. So sometimes I was burned out and I had to realize that things were supposed to be put on hold because it's always active.

And as an engineer, it might sound like everything might be hard for your classes, but it's doable to have other things going on which are not engineering base. With that, you have to make sure you're concentrating on your engineering courses 1st and then everything else comes after. That is sometimes you just need a way to get away from engineering in general, 'cause it could be a little stressful, but there are other avenues in the University that can help you figure those out.

And even with that, I still managed to be an RA for two years here at CSU, and I can tell you that was the toughest job, because being able to assist the incoming freshman with their needs and then figuring out classes was hard. But as an engineer and someone who had mastered the power of time management, I was able to give them my hands about what to do and what not to do. And eventually, as of now, like I remember my first year as an R8, my residents that I have, they're actually seniors right now.

Can I talk to most of them all the time and then I try to figure out what's going on with them and most of them talk to me about how like the time management key aspects that I told them were really beneficial because most of them couldn't have made it this far without actually prioritizing what was right, which was their kid. It makes and everything else to just be in the moment and not just drift away with their academics.

Awesome, thank you so much. It's really cool to see how you all are super involved and can still balance everything. I think it's a test to all the discipline and time management that you probably dedicate to do all those things but another. The question that I had for you all is a little bit more informal, but I think it's really amazing to hear your experience within the organization, so why don't you all talk to me about your favorite memory in your organization and kind of like the back story in that memory so.

Does anyone wanna go ahead and go first?

I can go.

So I guess my favorite memory was actually happened this last semester, just before we got sent from college to online College in like around March or February. I think one of those two months it was we. It was my first time traveling for the regional Leadership Conference for ship. I really had a lot of fun. I I never like met any other students from other like universities.

So I I got to meet a lot of students from other universities who were also in engineering even though they were not like Civil Engineering's like they were other engineering.

Areas you know I got to learn a lot from there and then I also went to a conference for career fair in there and then we just learn. I went to a lot of Kino presentations speakers like from other industries like engineering industries. So I guess the leader, like the conference, was one of my memories. 'cause, you know, I was learning a lot of interesting information that I otherwise wouldn't have learned.

But also I was making the memories with my upperclassmen and like my friends who were also in ship. I remember it was very fun that the time we have to get ready for the career for so many stories that we had. Yeah I think it was definitely one of my favorite. I really got that time. I just became a lot of friends with the with the organization 'cause we got to meet each other you know?

Like dressing up professionally, like doing your hairs and like going out to to like the presentations and just learning and asking questions to the people. I think it was definitely a good time.

Awesome, thank you so much. Uh, Sally, Sir or coach? Or does anyone of you wanna go?

I can actually go. Mine was two years ago when I went to the National Convention and it was. It was an interesting thing because I had never actually gone to such a big organized event and within the conference we had like almost like 20 plus students on the ground, not including professional industry members and stuff like that. And during one of the career fairs I already had like some internships lined up that I was like looking forward to. So I decided to just walk through the internship.

And see what they have to offer. An one thing that I realized was the the opportunities that are out there and how they East companies reach out to you like no matter what you're going through like they just want to know your story and within a couple of minutes of talking to one company like they were super interested in my story, that anything want to take time to like. Just like go over my academics and see what courses I was doing in order for me to get an internship. He told me like because of your story.

And how dedicated you are as an engineer. This is what we need and that proved to me that like as an engineer, you don't have to always like be exceptional in academics for try to just do everything that you know about engineering just so you can get an internship. Sometimes to stretch your story and what efforts you put into making yourself a better person that gets you these internships. An I was surprised you like even know that within 20 minutes of talking I have already had an interview with them and then Hadden.

First sign that they were like we're interested in you who want you to work for us and up to today. They still try to get my need to change my mind in terms of like being an active duty Air Force officer so I can work for them. And those are the opportunities out there that you can actually benefit from as an engineer, not just wear your academics, but with your story as well.

Awesome, thank you so much Kojo.

Was really cool.

So one of my favorite memories, so definitely international conference. But since you guys already touched on that, I'll share a different one. 'cause there's a lot of great memories with sweet, but one of my favourites was last year we were doing elections because we elect all of our office or positions new for each year. And so we dedicate usually a whole meeting to it to decide which to choose. The best people to likely organization for the coming year and so.

Not many people have decided to run for the vice president role.

And so I was actually nominated by a couple different of my fellow sweet what we call each other sweeter. It's just a fun thing, sorry, I just refer to that. They actually nominated me and I ended up obviously winning this vision. 'cause I'm the vice president now, but it was just a great thing. 'cause I obviously didn't reply 'cause I wasn't sure if I had the leadership capability to do so. If I would have enough time to do it if I would just be able to do it overall. But all these different people from their organization believe demeanor like.

We want you to be the vice president. They nominated me and so I feel like that just shows the community within it and the professional development because I'm still here and still going strong. So I've definitely developed a lot of leadership abilities with being from these organizations. I just really value that moment.

Awesome, thank you so much Sarah. I think you all touched on some really great points. I'm not seeing any questions in our chat so if you do have interest in knowing about our organizations like I mentioned, we do have access to that contact information that you can go ahead and reach out to us for. We do have around 4 minutes still so if you have any last minute questions feel free to input them on our chapter. But before I ask my last question which is super brief.

I really do wanna touch on the experience that a lot of our students have. I know we mentioned a lot of things around national conferences and the internship opportunities. Or you know the sister hood. That or organizations offer. And so I think it's important to note that for a lot of our organizations to participate in National Conference. But we do have funding opportunities so that cost doesn't fall on the all on the student. And so that's really important because that recognizes the importance of professional development.

And I think another opportunity lays into recognizing that all of our organizations at these are what we call our collegiate chapters. So they are at the college level, and then afterwards a lot of our organizations also have professional chapters. So if you want to continue the work that you do after graduation after you leave CSU, you still have the opportunity to engage in your student organization whether you serve on the national board or on your national chapter, you can do that as well.

And so the last question that I had is what advice do you have for our incoming students that are interested in engineering? Or maybe joining a student organization?

I can go on that. So one advice that I would say is coming in as an engineer is having an open mindset. You're going to be challenged and you're going to sometimes struggle, but always know that you're not alone. There are other people around that will assist you in most of the times you would seek, you should seek refuge and the people around you. Most of your friends are. You're going to have for your college career going to be there once like you live in your dorms with.

And some are going to be the student organisations that you end up joining. So just be open about it. Look, look at them, look at their websites, research more, even joined their meetings, or even if it's like a day or something, get to know them and then figure out what's best for you. If you feel like you're struggling or you don't need any of that, feel free to hop out and explore different organisations is they're all created for students by students, so it's just a great opportunity for you to like it's for what you are willing to.

Microsoft into.

I can follow up to that one. It kind of.

Sorry.

Now you can go ahead.

OK, OK, I'll be quick. So my one piece of advice is to just try everything that you can. This is like one of major period of your life for you like have not that many commitments. You can just try anything that you want to try. Try all the student organizations trying to play IM sports if you want. I love playing soccer, there's one that's even inner tube water polo that my roommates like to play. Just try everything, especially as an engineer. It's great to have these different options, different things that you're involved in like.

Try research. It's super fun. Last year I was involved in a choir. You don't have to be a music major to do that, and it was a great outlet for me and I just love that. In college you can just have little bits of every single thing without this being your one clear yet. So while you're here, I would totally take advantage of that and do it all.

I guess my advice would be like I know it, you might sound redundant or like something that's been said by a lot, but just don't be afraid. You know. Go ahead and like try explore different things. Ask questions like that's definitely like something I would recommend. Ask questions to your peers to your class.

Professors diese, you know? I remember I got an email from an opportunity that's a research too for sure program. It's a it was a program for undergrads so that they could do research experience in engineering even in their first year. Here she is you. I remember receiving an email about it and I was like what is this like? I don't. I'm not sure should I apply and I ask questions to the person who sent the email and they were very.

Very thorough and very friendly and responding them like they. They made me feel like I was like good for asking, you know, like an I actually apply for it and I actually got that. The research experience for one semester as a first year undergrad student. So like what I got from there is like don't be afraid to like ask questions and reach out to people like that's definitely one thing that has helped me a lot. Reach out to like.

PS professor students you know any resources Casillas do does offer a lot of resources and I feel like it's important to reach out. Even if you're like a little bit of fray like just keep that fearing like in there but like still go, you know like.

Like kind of go out of your comfort zone kind of thing. Yeah, 'cause there's many like resources. As I said an we are always here like to help you.

Awesome, thank you all so much for taking time out of your Saturday. An being here with us. We really appreciate your unique perspectives an you know just sharing your experience about what it's like to be in a student organization and so at a slightly Kojo and Sarah again. Thank you. We were really excited to have you here today for folks in the chat. If you have questions, our emails are in that chat box, so feel free to ask us anything but we were happy to really have you in the space today to just share a little bit more about gpe organization.

And we hope you have a good rest of your day. So thank you everyone. Have a good one.

Have a great weekend bye.